Live Lab Methodology

LIVE Lab

Methodology

Section 1

Foreword

This methodology is developed as part of the Strategic Partnership for Youth -Erasmus+ project ”YES for Entrepreneurial Youth NGOs, YES for Millennials Changers” implemented by ACE-ES Romania in partnership with Centro Superior de Formacion EUROPA SUR (Spain) and bbw gGmbH (Germany) from September 2015 to October 2016.

The general aim of the project is to stimulate transnational exchange of good practices and relevant experiences in developing modern and challenging action-based learning contexts for professional people of the youth NGOs (with a focus on youth workers) based on social enterpreneurship so that they could stimulate development of their organisations and their target groups.

The LIVE Lab Methodology is designed to help an NGO to develop an effective and well-managed work with young volunteers that makes best mutual benefits for both sides – not only for the NGO but also for the volunteers. The way an organisation chooses to work with its young volunteers is very crucial. How activities are designed and implemented will directly affect their impact on volunteers’s capacity to bring about real and valuable inputs and contributions in the organization where they are volunteering for.

It is designed also for those NGOs that are considering starting a revenue-generating activity or a business venture/a social enterprise based on and collaborating with the young volunteers. The most important thing is entrepreneurship skills and competences. Gaining and putting into practice these skills and competences need the right set of opportunities for young volunteers to participate on entrepreneurial projects. Generating and strengthening an entrepreneurial culture within NGO could attract and stimulate youth to be more involved in volunteering work and also to put their talents, energy, freshness of thinking on the benefit of the organization.

It is intending to propose a very participative way of working with volunteers for the prosperity of an organization as a whole. It is a win-win approach based on:

involving, motivating, stimulating and engaging the young volunteers into the youth NGOs in order to contribute proactively to a shift of those to social enterpreneurship and organizational self-sustainability on a long term.

stimulating the NGO to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem for young volunteers so that they could generate within that organization added value through the creation or expansion of economic activities by identifying and exploiting new products, processes or markets.

BOX 1

What is LIVE Lab?

It is a way of planning, organizing and implementing work with young volunteers within a NGO aims to encourage the increasing of the participation/involvement levels of youth in their everyday volunteering activities and practices so that NGO experts and youth could closely collaborate for starting and developing sustained results through social ventures and entrepreneurial projects. It is a ”ground” where the needs of volunteers meet the needs of the NGO to which they provide services and support.

Section 2

Reasons and a rationale – why should we reshape the traditional ways of volunteering/reasons for a NGO having engaged and entrepreneurial young volunteers

Social entrepreneurship plays a tremendeous role in the achievement of holistic development in young people while also allowing young people to contribute to the development of their own communities or their organizations.

This role allows the youth being more than just ”a voice” or a symbolic presence; it is allowing them to be active agents of change.

Over the last decade, the OECD Local Economic and Employment Development Programme (LEED) has produced policy documentation about the positive role of youth entrepreneurship in local development and NGOs sustainability and gave advice on how youth entrepreneurship can be promoted and supported.LEED researches show that many young job-seekers and volunteers aged between 16 and 35, have positive attitudes towards entrepreneurship/social entrepreneurship, but only a small percentage of youth prefer starting their own business instead of dependent employment.

Also, only few young people learn at an early age about social entrepreneurship. “Taking initiative, creating a project, conceptualizing and launching one’s own venture are exceptions, not the rule in most young people’s experience. Every young volunteer is good at something. Encouraging and giving that young volunteer the opportunity to succeed is extremely important in shaping their personality and tolerance for risk.”

On the other side, nonprofits rely heavily on volunteers, but many organizations do a poor job of managing them. As a result, more than one-third of those who volunteer one year do not donate their time the next year – AT ANY NONPROFIT! In addition, most of the NGOs do not view their young volunteers as strategic assets and have not developed ways to take full advantage of them. The nonprofit sector desperately needs the professional and personal skills offered by youth, it needs their energy, their ”brains and harts”. 

Therefore, NGOs are more oftenly confronting with a shortage of resources so that they are forced to develop an entrepreneurial Capacity Building framework.

WHY?

WHY?

WHY?

WHY?

BOX 2

The world of volunteerism has changed a lot over the past years!

Time, meaning, value, demographics, pluralism, solidarity, and technology are affecting volunteerism across many countries.

Argument 1: Those under 30 are more than half the world’s population!Young people are increasingly interested in making a difference.  Nonprofit leaders need to modernize their perspective of the value of unpaid work and embrace volunteer talent of youth as an important tool to reach their mission.

Argument 2:

Outside there are new generations of volunteers. They want to lend their knowledge, expertise, and time to help nonprofits. Young people are eager to take active roles in everything they do. These types of volunteers typically cannot be easily managed and will be unhappy in traditionally organized volunteer programs with forms, applications and discussions about service. They want action, maximum involvement in decision making process, they want a space where could experiment and bring their ideas. Research found that young people want ”to have a say in the planning and decision-making in their volunteering”. “They fashion their dreams into realistic goals, build the organizations and lead the projects through to completion.”

Argument 3:

What volunteers want: A two-way street – Empowerment vs. Delegation: in the past, volunteering was about donating time to an organization, with the organization deciding how the volunteer hours would be spent, but today, volunteers, especially youth, are looking for reciprocity, a win-win situation.

Have you ever heard one of your volunteers say, "I'm just a volunteer!" or, "They expect too much for free!" If so, they are probably not feeling like an equal member of the organization team.

Organisations that work with volunteers need to understand the changing motivations and needs of volunteers, acknowledging and responding to competing pressures on their time against a changing backdrop of working, family and community life. NGOs need to ensure their offer to volunteers fits with young people’s real lives and it is responsive to their motivations and needs.

Argument 4:

Nowdays is a world of knowledge workers. Today's volunteers are autonomous,

tech-savvy and mobile; they are students, newcomers, young professionals etc.

They are not focused on collective identities but motivate their participations on personal taste and experiences. They are asking for more short-term or project-based opportunities. They are more entrepreneurial and less likely to be attracted to large, bureaucratic structure. They want the freedom to try new things in new ways. They are technologically literate and prefer to use technology. Unlike their parents, they do not see technology as impersonal or cold. Indeed, they see technology as a means of connecting in new ways. They are comfortable searching for answers and information on the web. They are comfortable working alone or in virtual teams.

Argument 5:

Volunteer programs is not the exclusive realms of the affluent or well educated; volunteerism became a truly inclusive activity. Individuals with diverse backgrounds, skills, and abilities come together to work cooperatively on issues of common interest.

Argument 6:

Traditional volunteer programs are characterized by orderliness, with activities that are concrete and predictable. The organization determines what volunteers do, organizing them based on the experiences and practices of those who went before. They arrive at assigned times, coming to the organization to carry out prearranged tasks, following a regular schedule. These volunteers impact organizational programming in predictable ways.

BUT the times are changing!

Not many NGOs stop doing business as usual and re-think their approach to all aspects of volunteer work within the organization. A lot of organizations continue to rely on the same old agendas for its volunteer members.

Young volunteers want to know that they are helping to make the world a better place. NGOs must provide that opportunity. Turning the volunteer job into a mini educational experience will be highly valued by youth, and will likely result in some great referrals as the volunteers tell others about what a great experience they are having.

Delivering the best experience possible for the volunteers! Trust them! Trust their skills! Give their own space of decision and actions!

Just a simple NGOs recognition that the young volunteer can bring a high level of skill to an organization and carry greater responsibility than previously considered possible could re-shape the old settings. Maybe too old…

Argument 7:

Youth express stronger bonds with the beneficiaries or clients of a NGO than with the organization itself. They need to be connected to the larger cause and outcome of their contributions. Therefore a program, a project or an activity is more important for the new volunteer rather than the membership. For the leadership of the organization means that the traditional parameters with which the organization is designed must be deeply reviewed.

A comparison between:

Classic Volunteering

3. Work Style: How will people volunteer for you?

Once you have those motivating factors down, think about how volunteers will work for you. According to research done by ASAE, about 56 percent of volunteers opt to work with like-minded people, and four in five volunteers are motivated by passion for the cause. Millennials connect with causes first, not organizations. So nurture that desire for peer interaction and team-based activities. Focus on opportunities that will be skills-based, and fuse those skills with the desire for life-long learning.

Liz Weaver, vice-president of Tamarack – An Institute for Community Engagement, suggests that the important question nonprofits need to address is “How do we bridge these conversations to what volunteers are interested in and what their role could be?” Currently, says Taylor, there is no clear mechanism to capture the energy and enthusiasm of volunteers — while still making sure the phones are answered.

“When we don’t match the needs of the volunteer with the needs of the organization, we lose them.” Investing time with the volunteer about what they need will result in more productivity and potential long-term support.

“It really is a shift for organizations to be willing to let go of controlling all of the information and, rather, creating spaces for people to have dialogue about the issues, causes, and events important to them,” she said. “What we give away in controlling all of the information, we more than make up for by being more open to input from members and volunteers, and that’s what they want today. They expect to be able to help shape the future of their organization.”

Changing Expectations:

.

Skill Development

Some volunteers want to bring their expertise to your group, whether it is their marketing background, computer experience, or people skills. Others may volunteer to enhance certain skills or maintain ones they already possess. Still others come with the desire to learn something new.

For example, if you find out that your new volunteer, Susan, works in the telemarketing industry, your immediate thought might be to assign her the task of fundraising via telephone. If you dig deeper, however, you'll learn that Susan is volunteering to get away from the stress of her day job, and that she really wants to become part of the volunteer training team. Susan would like to learn about your organization and refine her management and speaking skills. With the experience she acquires by volunteering with you, she hopes to secure a new job.

This example illustrates how crucial it is to gather information from a newly recruited volunteer. Find out not only his/her current skills but also what skills he or she wishes to develop through volunteer activities. This is a valuable means of evaluating the tasks that should be assigned to maximize retention.

an organization needs to be aware of what motivates and leads each one to feel satisfied with the time he or she donates.

As artist and author Florence Scovel Shinn put it: "Giving opens the way for receiving."

At the same time that volunteering has become more structured, the service industry has embraced new categories of volunteers. Serendipitous, socialchange and entrepreneurial volunteers have joined traditional ones. This increased and widespread variation in civic engagement demonstrates that volunteers have become interested in working outside of the formalized system and having more personalized experiences.

traditional volunteers enjoy constancy and incremental change in their form of volunteering

Traditional volunteer programs are characterized by orderliness, with activities that are concrete and predictable. The volunteer is comfortable with the fact that the details of the organization are outside of the individual’s knowledge. The organization determines what volunteers do, organizing them based on the experiences and practices of those who went before. Traditional volunteers provide consistent and regular services to many organizations. They arrive at assigned times, coming to the organization to carry out prearranged tasks, following a regular schedule. They are tutors in schools, greeters in hospitals, sales clerks in museum gift stores, missionaries commissioned to far-flung places and soccer coaches in youth leagues. These volunteers impact organizational programming in important and predictable ways. Organizations rely on their extended presence and their skilled services to assure program success. The conventional wisdom is that traditional volunteers come to their assignment on a stable and regulated schedule — once a week

Like a tinker, they have a desire to adjust and experiment with new approaches, products and services that will make the final outcome better than it currently is — and they believe there is an ultimate outcome to pursue. This outcome serves as a guiding force for them. Their internal drive thrives on the challenge of making something new work and contributing to the larger society. Social-change volunteers are cause-oriented and sometimes impatient to make or begin large structural changes.

Entrepreneurial volunteers find what's not working and move toward empowerment solutions,

volunteering is a two-way relationship. The traditional view is that volunteers make a gift of their time, without any desire or expectation of getting anything out of the process. Although the element of altruism is felt by many to be an essential ingredient in volunteering, this ‘oneway’ relationship is no longer seen as either realistic or useful by many of those with a direct involvement in volunteering. Instead, volunteering is understood as a relationship that, like most relationships, requires both parties to put something into the process in order to receive mutual benefits. On this basis, the organisation has a clear responsibility to plan and manage the way in which it involves volunteers in order to maximise the potential benefits to all concerned – the organisation itself, its clients or beneficiaries and the volunteers.

Recruiting teams rather than individuals is particularly effective with younger volunteers. Many people are afraid of getting tied into a job for a lifetime and never being able to get out of it. They get burned out and then quit the organization as a way to quit their volunteer role. I accomplish three objectives when I put together a short-term project team of new volunteers with a model leader:

Objective one: Volunteers are more willing to say yes to a short-term commitment with an end-date in sight.
Objective two: Volunteers have the opportunity to catch the vision of the organization because they were working with a passionate leader.
Objective three: Leaders became mentors for future passion driven teams. We were always looking for new leadership.

Why did the volunteer say “YES!”?

Because you framed your presentation according to the volunteer’s decision framing issues:  short meetings, high-capacity team members, a well defined scope of the event, self-directed team, empowerment, and high-tech communication methods.

An entitlement of opportunity for everyone to volunteer would ensure that: Everyone is encouraged and supported to contribute to their communities through volunteering Strategies and partners establish a culture of volunteering to have a positive impact on people’s lives Everyone is able to contribute to their communities through volunteering

ALL CARDS ON THE TABLE:

Why passion is not enough?

Our Organization _________ (Planning-Meeting Opener)

Write the words "agree," "disagree," "strongly agree" and "strongly disagree" on separate pieces of paper and post them on four different walls of the room. Then make a statement such as:

Our organization can change the world.

Our organization has a focused mission.

Our organization is facing a major threat.

Our organization is living in the past.

Our organization stands on the threshold of opportunity.

Our organization is alive and growing.

Have everybody move to the part of the room that matches their opinion. Have the group discuss why they chose their response.

Have you ever heard one of your volunteers say, "I'm just a volunteer!" or, "They expect too much for free!" If so, they're probably not feeling like an equal member of your team.

What is a volunteer’s decision frame?

Some important issues might be one or more of the following:

What is the time commitment?

What is the mission?

What the impact?

How can I use my professional expertise to make a difference?

What’s in it for me?

Are you flexible in scheduling?

top seven reasons that people quit-according to my experience.

Number 7: No flexibility in volunteer opportunities or scheduling
Number 6: Too much wasted time in useless or unproductive meetings
Number 5: Lack of communication
Number 4: Lack of professionalism
Number 3: The feeling that the volunteer is not really making a difference
Number 2: No feedback from leadership about how the volunteer is doing

And the Number 1 reason: The volunteer leader who doesn't know how to lead

These findings are the starting point of LIVE Lab …….

Main core of LIVE Lab is volunteer synergy as: Two or more parts working together to produce a result that is not reacheable by any of the part alone.

Two parctices must be eliminated

Roadblock One: My Way is Best

Roadblock Two: Decisions Come From the Top

Many organizations delegate an assignment to a committee or team. The team merely performs a task assigned. Much like the boss who says, "Go get me a cup of coffee." Visionaries won't stand for delegation. They demand to be empowered. The organization that doesn't empower visionaries and still follows the principle, "all decisions come from the top" will not keep visionary volunteers.

Visionaries who own decisions make them happen. Effective volunteer managers give their visionary volunteers problems to solve. When visionaries figure out the solutions to the problem, they own the solution and will make it happen. Un-empowered decision making is a huge roadblock for the visionary volunteer. Most volunteers want to own the decisions.

Rule One: Stop multi-tasking, turn off the CD running full speed in your mind, look the volunteer straight in the eye, and listen.

Rule Two: Determine the volunteers' real needs. What are they really saying?

What are your volunteers doing that is creative and exciting?

What changes are impacting your work with volunteers?

What are the reasons that volunteer quit your organization?

The problems of the community might be challenging. The problems of the organization might be without solutions. It is a thinking like there is no point trying to do something. Many young volunteers could ask theirselves – how can they really make a difference in everything that needs to be done in organization or in community?

lead us to a very neccessary shifting of the traditional ways of volunteering. A NGO must learn to

What makes these diverse activities different from traditional youth development programs is that the young people themselves come up with the ideas and control the projects–young people themselves are in charge. “They fashion their dreams into realistic goals, build the organizations and lead the projects through to completion.”

Young people must be given the opportunity to lead, the opportunity to create something at a very young age, so that they sense that this is something they can do, that they can contribute to solving the world’s problems.39 “Research on Do Something concluded that young people are more likely to be engaged with their community as adults if they are involved before age 14. Those youth that have had these opportunities are significantly more likely to remain committed and active community members. Having had the opportunity to learn by doing, youth are better equipped to positively, if not dramatically, impact their communities.”

“If we want to engage the next generation in leadership, we need to start thinking now about how we can get them interested and engaged in a way that will help us all grow.”

identify entrepreneurial andto turn their into successful ventures. Starting early in getting familiar with the idea that running

one’s own firm can be a potential career option is important and education has a core function in this. LEED research

confirms that it is the local context that triggers the start-up and growth of new businesses.

support frameworks with entrepreneurship education, start-up support and opportunity creation, that is, making

places conducive to youth entrepreneurship as key components. Local partnerships, involving schools, higher education

institutions, training providers, business development services, local authorities and local businesses, are crucial to the

creation and sustainability of such entrepreneurial ecosystems

She adapted her program to me, allowing a shift from “you have to fit into our program” to “we can change our program to your strengths and time to help us fulfill our mission.” Empowering Volunteers to Do It Their Way.”

The Seven Standards for Participation by Young People

STANDARDS This means:- 1 INFORMATION  Information that is easy to understand for everyone  Adults working with you who know what is going on and are up front and clear

2 CHOICE  You choose if you want to get involved or not  You choose to work on things that are important to you  You choose what you do and how you do it

3 NO DISCRIMINATION

 Children and young people are all different but you all have the same right to have a say about the things that matter to you  We want everyone to feel welcome and be able to get involved if they want to be

4 RESPECT  Everyone has a chance to have a say, your opinions are important and we will respect them 5 GET SOMETHING OUT OF IT  We want you to enjoy and benefit from taking part  We know that you have other things to do in your lives as well!  Making sure that participating is a positive not a negative experience 6 FEEDBACK  It’s really important that you know what difference you have made and how your ideas have been used

7 IMPROVE HOW WE WORK

 We want to learn and get better at the way we work with you

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Our organisational principles

3. Build partnerships and trust through:

Cooperation. Work with and listen carefully to

others.

Impact. If an organisation supports a community in

achieving real and positive change it will earn

respect and reputation

Participation. People respect and value what they

are or have been involved in themselves.

A principle is something that guides everyday practice.

For example, many NGOs share the principles of democracy and

accountability. This means that they give a high premium to

consultative, transparent and participatory ways of working and decision

making. However, internal organisational democracy, transparency and

accountability are often difficult principles to practise and NGOs that

advocate transparent democratic and accountable government are more

likely to be heard if they are seen to practise these principles themselves.

Some NGOs regard their accountability to staff, members and target

groups as equally important to their accountability to international

funding agencies.

Clarifying organisational principles

An organisation’s members together with its staff, the governing body

and other key stakeholders might want to share ideas about its principles

so that they have a real stake in it and share a common understanding of

its purpose and what it stands for. The CBC has developed a checklist of

organisational principles.

1. Use a participatory strategy

A participatory strategy means involving the

participants and the community in the

organisation, starting from when it defines its

objectives and ideas all the way through to

programme implementation and evaluation.

• Approve a governing document that will define

roles and responsibilities.

• Adopt a management style that supports

people.

• Plan the involvement of beneficiaries in

measuring the NGO’s effectiveness.

• Approve and implement financial and

administrative policies and procedures.

• Prepare quality financial reports for the

governing body and other key stakeholders.

• Conduct regular systems audits

Involving the volunteers and activelly collaborating with them its members are cornerstones of efforts to improve public health

“See young people as a resource, not a problem…” Youth Statement to the World Summit for Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2002

Very often becoming an entrepreneur is the result of a personal decision making process including assessments of opportunities

and their costs (being employed, being unemployed, being one’s own boss), risk-reward relationships (what

is at stake), and others. Values, beliefs and behaviours, embedded in the culture of a country and a place, influence this

decision. Entrepreneurship education and start-up support, with its two-fold purpose of contributing to the creation and

development of entrepreneurial attitudes and motivations and developing the skills needed to successfully run and grow

a business, can play an important role in the decision making process. Promoting youth entrepreneurship has become

an area of growing policy interest all over OECD countries and beyond. This OECD definition of entrepreneurship encompasses

both the act of running one’s own businesses, and being the entrepreneurial manager or employee of a firm. This

book draws on this definition, but sets the focus on the former.

.

Reasons and a rationale – why should we reshape the traditional ways of volunteering/reasons for a NGO for wanting and having engaged and entrepreneurial young volunteers

Section 3

What is LIVE Lab – a working way allowing the young volunteers to identify, analyse, propose, decide, share their skills/knowledge and take entrepreneurial action against sustainability challenges in their organization. Empowering and engaging with them as equal partners in development of organization through social business. It is ”learning by doing” – young vounteers design and run social ventures which address sustainability problems which affect their organization and its beneficiaries directly.

Aim: To examine your organisation’s attitudes to volunteers and its approach to volunteer involvement. Spend 10-15 minutes thinking about or discussing why your organisation involves volunteers and try to write down at least three or four reasons in order of importance. Think about…

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Exercitiu I want to do this/I know this

http://foresters.org.au/u/lib/cms/a_toolkit_for_developing_a_social_purpose_business_plan.pdf

de folosit pentru cum creeaza impreuna voluntarul cu ong ul o intreprindere sociala, pag. 18, la pag. 30 are exemplu de caz IS de tineri de folosit in modulul cu cazuri. Pagina 42, pag. 156 forate tare de apdaptta cas a vedem cum folosim voluntarii – ei isi exprima dorinat/putinta

Asta fac impreuna voluntarii cu ong ul

An Action Plan is a planning tool that can organize the key activities for the business planning process. Overall, the Action Plan delineates: • What activities/tasks will be done • Who is responsible for doing these activities and tasks • When each activity/task will be completed

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What are their personal or domestic circumstances? • What are their hobbies and interests? • What values or beliefs are important to them?

Principles of working within the LIVE Lab – de adapatat

• There is an expressed commitment to the involvement of volunteers, and recognition throughout the organisation that volunteering is a two-way process which benefits volunteers and the organisation. • The organisation commits appropriate resources to working with volunteers, such as money, management, staff time and materials. • The organisation is open to involving volunteers who reflect the diversity of the local community, and actively seeks to do this in accordance with its stated aims. • The organisation develops appropriate roles for volunteers in line with its aims and objectives, and which are of value to the volunteers. • The organisation is committed to ensuring that, as far as possible, volunteers are protected from physical, financial and emotional harm arising from volunteering. • The organisation is committed to using fair, efficient and consistent recruitment procedures for all potential volunteers. • Clear procedures are put into action for introducing new volunteers to the role, the organisation, its work, policies, practices and relevant personnel. • The organisation takes account of the varying support needs of volunteers. • The whole organisation is aware of the need to give volunteer recognition.

Be outcome-focused – have an open mind about new formats and structures.

Think of your volunteers as extra staff who are capable of performing complex tasks that take advantage of their experience and skills. Provide leadership opportunities to those volunteers who are willing and have the time to shoulder more responsibility.

If it is loosely organized or entrepreneurial, you will want to look for individuals who are self-starters and who enjoy working with less structure and direction.

Not Matching Volunteers’ Skills with Assignments. Volunteers with valuable and specialized skills are often dispatched to do manual labor rather than tasks that use their professional talents. INVERSEAZA FARAZA, FA-O POZITIVA

If nonprofit leaders want highly skilled volunteers to come and stay, they need to expand their vision of volunteering by creating an experience that is meaningful for the volunteer, develops skills, demonstrates impact, and taps into volunteers’ abilities and interests. 

At LIVE Lab we believe that the answers to the NGOs most pressing sustainability/impact problems will come from the young volunteers. Every time a NGO faces a new challenge, it should start with people, and keep the young volunteers at the center of the process. They are a path of organizational stability and relevant development.

I do believe that this innovative approach is the way forward, both for volunteer satisfaction and for the continuous improvements that all organisations are seeking.

Finding together Appropriate Tasks. NGO and volunteers must find tasks and activities that make the most of young volunteers values, skills and talents.

But this traditional approach also reinforces the conventional idea that it is the role of the organization both to define the needs and to select the ways the needs will be met.  This is fine up to a point.  But it perpetuates the notion that volunteers are “helpers,” the enthusiastic labor bringing the organization’s strategies to life.  Pre-developed assignments also do not welcome totally new approaches to the problems at hand, may not evoke discovery of unexpected talents offered by a prospective volunteer, and therefore can lead to squeezing square pegs into round holes.

What would happen if, instead, we crafted at least some of our recruitment messages differently?  What if we described the needs but then put out a call for people with creative ideas for how to meet them?  That would even go beyond civic engagement to social entrepreneurship, yet another 21st century phrase adding some pizzazz to volunteering.

For example:

Our community has a long list of elderly people living alone who have few family members or friends for support.  We are providing services such as visiting nurses and home chore service, but this does not meet the need for socializing, or for feeling valued and wanted.  So we are seeking volunteers with some great ideas for putting smiles on our clients’ faces.  What can you do to make this happen?

you are seeking ideas, will consider them all carefully, but retain final say over what is done in the name of your organization. 

made by many, open, participatory and peer-driven. It is not there to be hoarded, but rather channeled. New Power models (and we see them everywhere) are enabled by peer coordination and the power of the crowd. They tap into people’s growing capacity and desire to participate in ways that go beyond passive consumption.

Choosing, Producing & Co-Ownership: The Engagement Scale These elements represent steps toward deeper commitment or engagement, and are therefore crucial elements to be considered when thinking about how to engage employees, consumers and other stakeholders in community investment initiatives.  Is your current program likely to appeal to individuals who seek these elements?

Balance between personal preference and organisation’s needs

Individualisation

The LIVE Lab should not be considered as an all or nothing proposition: we’re not suggesting that the Crowd should make every decision, or that there isn’t a place for companies to have strategic business goals around community investment beyond the individual desires of their employees. 

Every organization is different and thus management must be flexible adjusted. It's not a black – white story.

NGOs must nurture moving young volunteers from interests to concrete actions. 

The process and exploration, the construction of own identity is very important. The search for voluntary work which matches with their current expectations, vision, background and interests can be stressful. There are so many choices you have to make. There are so many possibilities. Within this path of choosing it is normal that you will eventually make a wrong choice. This also will give stress. But it will also give direction to other possibilities.

The challenge is therefore the right person in the right place. It is critical to make negotiations between the needs of the organization and the needs of the volunteer.

Flexivol (Gaskin 1998) The FLEXIVOL wish list wants to offer a success formula to the youth culture of the current self-made generation compatible with the new styles of volunteering. This includes the following dimensions: • ' Flexibility ': flexible work and flexible working hours are for young people a top priority. Unlike the pressure they encounter on other life domains, they cherish a certain degree of freedom and spontaneity in their volunteer work. • ' Legitimacy ': volunteering is facing legitimacy problems. The old-fashioned atmosphere of charity which restrains many young people of volunteering. There are so many other, more trendy areas that are active. • ‘Ease of acces ': access to volunteering can be widened by as much information as possible, to provide extra incentives and low threshold activities. A noncommittal 30 acquaintance or ' getting to know each other game' can become an intense longer-term commitment. • ' Xperience ': young people expect the (work) experience they acquire during their voluntary commitment is also useful for their personal development and career prospects. These instrumental motifs occur more frequently with young people. • ' Incentives ': volunteering competes with other leisure activities. For the time and attention of youth volunteering, it is useful to ensure incentives and rewards in volunteering. • Variety ': youth demand a large variety, both in the variety of activities as in the degree of involvement and responsibility. • ' Organization ': volunteering must be efficient but informal organized. A bureaucratic setting, nanny and control are out of the question. • ' Laughs ': volunteering should be fun. Social contact, relaxation and have fun volunteering attractive for young people.

they say: ‘You can’t solve it, you’re too young’.

I sometimes think the prejudice has shifted the other way, they look at your age, at your background and think: ‘What can you know at seventeen?’ I don’t think they make enough time to actually listen and hear the skills that you’ve got.

A solution is proposed in the form of the acronym FLEXIVOL: Flexibility, Legitimacy, Ease of access, , Xperience, Incentives, Variety, Organisation and Laughs. Instead of attempting to make young people fit into existing volunteering, we should reshape volunteering to accommodate them.

Flexivol (Gaskin 1998) The FLEXIVOL wish list wants to offer a success formula to the youth culture of the current self-made generation compatible with the new styles of volunteering. This includes the following dimensions: • ' Flexibility ': flexible work and flexible working hours are for young people a top priority. Unlike the pressure they encounter on other life domains, they cherish a certain degree of freedom and spontaneity in their volunteer work. • ' Legitimacy ': volunteering is facing legitimacy problems. The old-fashioned atmosphere of charity which restrains many young people of volunteering. There are so many other, more trendy areas that are active. • ‘Ease of acces ': access to volunteering can be widened by as much information as possible, to provide extra incentives and low threshold activities. A noncommittal 30 acquaintance or ' getting to know each other game' can become an intense longer-term commitment. • ' Xperience ': young people expect the (work) experience they acquire during their voluntary commitment is also useful for their personal development and career prospects. These instrumental motifs occur more frequently with young people. • ' Incentives ': volunteering competes with other leisure activities. For the time and attention of youth volunteering, it is useful to ensure incentives and rewards in volunteering. • Variety ': youth demand a large variety, both in the variety of activities as in the degree of involvement and responsibility. • ' Organization ': volunteering must be efficient but informal organized. A bureaucratic setting, nanny and control are out of the question. • ' Laughs ': volunteering should be fun. Social contact, relaxation and have fun volunteering attractive for young people.

LIVE Lab:

A continuum From volunteer to task and from task to volunteer

Vertical Integration in organization

Expectations Explicitly

Parameters should be developed in negotiation with volunteers. Organizations must shift their focus from only recruiting for themselves. The aim is to treat volunteers as regenerative resources instead of dispensable products. See volunteers as renewable or rechargeable batteries instead of disposable batteries.

Aici e un tabel comparativ traditional/sustainable

Offer of volunteering

Description of tasks, functions versus Compromise: organization needs needs of volunteer Recruitment Suitability versus Negotiation

Strategic orientation Quantity: needs of organization in competition to other organization versus Quality answered on mutual needs focused on longer cooperation, also in relation to other organizations

Management Rigid management and focus on recruitment or member management versus Flexible management

Is the shift from . It’s all about “there’s a lot of work to be done; let’s get volunteers to do it!”

https://www.ocai-online.com/userfiles/file/ocai_enterprise_example_report.pdf

de adapatat chestionarul de la pag. 43

Experience is high on young people’s wishlist for volunteering. They want relevant and interesting experiences that will stand them in good stead in their personal and career development. They want exciting opportunities in areas that interest them, such as arts and music projects, fashion and design, video and media, sports and outdoor pursuits, city farms, environmental projects, computers, the fire brigade and the police (Vincent et al., 1998). Volunteering needs to offer opportunities to take on stimulating work, to develop skills, to explore different careers and to get work experience. Instrumental motivations are not new, but appear to be increasing rapidly among young people.

The overwhelming emphasis on flexibility in volunteering expressed by all types of young people in the focus groups suggests that organisations and government need to rethink volunteering in the light of the realities of young people’s lives. Instead of presenting volunteering as a given into which young people should fit, we need to take the preferences and imperatives of young people’s lives as the basis, and reshape volunteering to accommodate them.

Young people’s recipe for improving the youth volunteering situation is simple: make it higher profile, more accessible, more flexible, more appealing, more varied, more rewarding and more young people-friendly

It must appeals to the young

They recognise that voluntary work can provide a channel of development and discovery, but there are so many other things that they could or should be doing. In a world where their lives seem to belong to others and their futures are cause for anxiety, they demand scope for spontaneity, stimulation and satisfaction in volunteering – or, frankly, they just won’t bother.

Youth volunteers are not leaders of tomorrow, not the hope of the future — rather they are the leaders of today and the future is now! Youth volunteers can challenge previous ways of thinking, doing and feeling. They are full of ideas and they have much to contribute. Becky Anderson (Calgary) Volunteer Coordinator, Canadian Cancer Society

In order to get a return, you have to invest.  Service Enterprises are able to get as much as three to six times the value out of volunteers as the cost to manage them.  This is tremendous leverage for the community, but does require an upfront and ongoing investment.  Both nonprofit and business Service Enterprises invest in people, plans and programs to enable volunteers to create critical impact. 

you want the freedom to create your own volunteer opportunities with organizations that connect with your values. You want to offer up a specific set of skills versus committing to pre-defined opportunities.     

Start-ups begin with people and ideas. New Zealand has an opportunity to inspire young people of all backgrounds to consider a future as a social entrepreneur and to offer developmental stepping stones on that journey. Investing in young social entrepreneurs achieves several purposes: develops socially engaged citizens who will contribute to more vibrant communities empowers young people to help solve the glaring issues they and their communities face trains a generation of entrepreneurs and innovators to grow new business and economic development. What is the right age to introduce young people to the attitudes and skills that create entrepreneurs and social innovators?

School-age Enterprise Development There are excellent models for how to engage and develop young people to become innovators and entrepreneurs. There are four core components: Knowledge – a learning environment that fosters creativity and supports students to be self-motivated to pursue their passions Experience – opportunities to apply knowledge to novel problems and to produce authentic work Mentoring – support by caring adults who coach students using strengthsbased and culturally sensitive approaches. Family support and professional guidance are both essential System of supports – for these students to be successful, they require a host of supports. These include tools (such as state-of-the-art technology), access to networks that connect them to influencers and leaders, funding and recognition for their achievements.

you want the freedom to create your own volunteer opportunities with organizations that connect with your values. You want to offer up a specific set of skills versus committing to pre-defined opportunities.     Russell Commission has been the question of ownership. Research for the Commission found that young people wanted ‘to have a say in the planning and decision-making in their volunteering’ (Ellis, 2005;        

The experts concurred that volunteers need to know that their time has been well spent and that their efforts have made a difference.

LIVE Lab provides quality volunteering experiences.

the rest will be left behind trying to make do the old way.

Bibliography:

1. PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT SECOND EDITION, NIH Publication No. 11-7782, Printed June 2011

2. Sianne Morgan,Torfaen Jane Davies, Carmarthen Hayley Wood, ENABLING PARTICIPATON BY YOUNG PEOPLE,

3. Treseder, P., 1997, Empowering Children and Young People, Training Manual,

4. Adolescents and Civil Engagement: Social Entrepreneurship and Young People © United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), New York, 2007

5. NATIONAL STANDARDS for Involving Volunteers in NOT-FOR-PROFIT

ORGANISATIONS, Volunteering Australia Inc., 2nd Edition.

6. Tom McKee, Jonathan McKee – The New Breed, Understanding and Equiping the 21st Century Volunteer

7. As Good As They Give Providing volunteers with the management they deserve, DSD and Volunteer Now, 2012

8. Colin Rochester, Making sense of volunteering, The Comission on the Future of Volunteering, 2006

9. Volunteer Connections: New strategies for involving youth, ©Volunteer Canada, 2001

Web sites:

The Shifting Model for Volunteer Engagement

http://www.volunteerscotland.net/media/704138/why_volunteering_matters-screen.pdf

http://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2013/mar/22/statistics-changes-volunteering-levels

http://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_new_volunteer_workforce

http://thenewmentality.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Ready-Set-engage.pdf

http://thenewmentality.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Ready-Set-engage.pdf

de vazut ce-i pe aici, pag 22, 45, 49 cu obstacole si motivatii si 52 musai pentur rezultatele cercetarii

http://www.fulbright.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/axford2013_kaplan.pdf

aici de folosit si pt. modulul cu exemple de tineri antreprenori – studii de caz

Volunteer creating options and chosing her/his proper direction of acting

having ideas!

establishing own target

Obstacle

Concepts of Doubts and fears, choices

Grow